Team USA 2012: What's Not To Like?

Watching the men’s US Olympic basketball team dismantle France over the weekend, my friend Patrick couldn’t contain his glee when France kept the game at least within reach over the 1st half. As a blue blooded American, this would strike some people as odd. 1st of all, you have to understand that Patrick is an eternal supporter of the underdog. For example, he vows that last year’s NCAA tournament was the greatest ever. I wondered how this was possible considering that the games were mostly dull and filled with what can only be considered a mediocre level of basketball at best. But to Pat, the upset-ridden field (which included a pair of 15-over-2 stunners) was the real story. For me, that’s a nice backdrop, but I tend to focus more on the games themselves. And my feeling that I was watching bad basketball has more to do with the overall landscape of college basketball (an AAU mentality, 1-and-done players, etc.) than with the advancement of lower seeded teams. The championship game in 2010, where Butler came within a Gordon Hayward halfcourt heave of winning the whole thing was 1 of the greatest college basketball games I ever watched…the following year when Butler shot about 8% from the field in the final game against Connecticut was not. So to me, upsets and underdogs are great, but they are like gravy…it doesn’t do a lot of good without the turkey and stuffing.

Having said all that, Patrick has a particular disdain for USA Basketball. He views them as arrogant and entitled, and he would like nothing better for Argentina or Spain or Lithuania to serve them a plate of comeuppance in these Olympic games. It made me wonder how prevalent that feeling is among Americans…is there a group of American-born basketball fans out there like Patrick that not only root for other teams to win, but who actively root for USA to lose too?

Anti-Team USA feelings this year might be misplaced.

My feeling is that a little bit of arrogance is unavoidable when you happen to be a mega-talent athlete of some kind, but I can kind of see his point. In 1992, the Dream Team was a revelation…they were so otherworldly, superhuman, and superior to the competition that it was impossible to feel anything but good will towards them. The Olympic teams that followed seemed to rest on the laurels of that ’92 team a little bit though. The Americans just seemed a little too sure they were going to win, and they seemed more concerned with dunking, flexing, and mean-mugging than anything else (cue Vince Carter’s leapfrog dunk in the 2000 games). And yet while we were still far and away the best in the world, everyone else was catching up…only we didn’t seem to take notice.

By 2004, it seemed like USA Basketball was a complete mess. Many of the top players showed little interest in playing to begin with, and no one really seemed to care either…as if winning a gold medal was a birthright. Surely, we could send over a team of college intramural all-stars and still win. Also, there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to how the team was selected. The rosters 2 “point guards” were the shot-happy Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury. That’s right, boys and girls…Stephon Marbury not only was selected to but started on a US Olympic basketball team at 1 time. The team was filled with great athletes, but no reliable outside shooters to speak of. Lamar Odom was the starting power forward for Pete’s sake! LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony were 19 and 20 years at the time, respectively, and neither had a particularly prominent role. After sheepishly coming home with a bronze medal, reporters asked Tim Duncan whether he would return to the US team again, to which he famously responded, “FIBA sucks.”

Oh, it's true...but finding this picture was more work than you think.

Team USA could still very well be upset. Lowly Tunisia’s flurry of 3’s in the 1st half of last night’s game (before getting whupped in the 2nd) should be enough to prove that. And if you want to, you can find things to pick at regarding USA Basketball over the last 2 Olympics as well. There will always be Kobe-haters/LeBron-haters/Coach K-haters out there. You can say this team isn’t of the caliber of the Dream Team or other teams before it. You can say it is a flawed team in terms of their size. For me, it’s hard to argue that it’s not a likeable team though. They seem to play hard and play for each other. They actually seem to like each other…the on-court connection between guys like Melo, LeBron, and Durant is easily apparent. And despite a lack of healthy quality big guys to choose from, the team appears to have been selected with a specific role for each guy in mind. I have rooted for much less likeable Team USA’s in the past…if I can root for AI-Starbury-Lamar, then I can root for these guys for sure.

YouTube Fri...Umm I Mean Thursday: Celebrities Taking Part In Their Own Twitter Abuse On Jimmy Kimmel Live

It’s “government Friday” again, which means that I’m far too lazy to come up with a semi-original thought today. What that usually leads to is me re-posting something from somewhere else that I found to be awesome…it’s kind of like stealing, but it’s also a free plug for whatever I’m posting, so I guess it kind of cancels out in the end.

Both of today's videos are courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel Live, where Jimmy gets famous people to read not-so-nice tweets from random anonymous Internet trolls (he says from his blog). The 1st clip is from the 1st time Kimmel worked this bit into his monologue back in May, and the 2nd clip is last night's rendition.

Nats-Mets: Making Something Out Of Nothing

It’s been so long since I’ve rooted for a legitimate 1st place baseball team (the O’s teams that have been atop the AL East in April and May only to finish 20 games under 0.500 the past several years don’t count) that it’s easy to forget how much fun it can be. Baseball is a quirky sport, where the better team doesn’t always win day in and day out. In fact, a crappy team has a pretty good shot at beating a great team on any given night, and the best teams in the majors usually win only about 60% of their games (that would be considered slightly better than mediocre in basketball and football).

But the better baseball teams still usually prove themselves out by the end of the season, which might require the ability to dig themselves out of some of the games that are mentioned above. Take this year’s Washington Nationals and their game last night in New York…the Nats had 2 runs on only 4 hits through 9 innings last night. In the 1st inning, Steve Lombardozzi reached on an infield single, and Bryce Harper brought him home with a 2-run blast to center. Those were the 1st 2 batters of the game...Danny Espinosa had a 2 out single later that inning, which means the Mets held Washington to 1 hit over the course of the next 8 innings. Yikes…

The top of the 10th started almost as inauspiciously. Roger Bernadina led off with a single, but it looked like it would be wasted by an ugly at bat by catcher Sandy Leon. Trying to move the runner to 2nd, Leon pitifully bunted 2 pitches foul, then weakly grounded the ball back to the pitcher. Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada bobbled the exchange at 2nd though, and everyone was safe. It still looked like the Nats would try to spoil their own good fortune with another s***ty bunt attempt, this time by Mark DeRosa, who’s bunt went straight back to the pitcher allowing for a force play at 3rd.

However, the normally light hitting Lombardozzi singled again to load the bases…and the kid followed him to deliver the go-ahead RBI single. Then, after not being able to hit their way out of a paper bag for most of the night, the flood gates suddenly opened. Ryan Zimmerman rocketed a bases-clearing double, and Michael Morse brought Zimmerman home with a beer league softball-esque missile beyond the centerfield wall.

It was a fun inning to watch given the previous 8. The Nats looked inept, got a stroke of good luck, looked as if they would squander their luck with more ineptitude, and then had their 3 biggest bats wake up all of the sudden. It was like they were finally able to get out of their own way long enough to let their talent take over…but then again, that’s what happens with a 1st place team I suppose.

Taking A Trip Down Dawson's Creek

Ahhh, summertime…when us sports fans shift our attention to NBA free agency, fantasy football pre-draft analysis, and (if all else fails) baseball. Similar to the sports front, primetime TV can be slim pickings when it comes to the dog days of summer. There are some hidden gems out there, but for the most part the summer months are none too kind to the ol’ DVR queue. Your best option is probably to turn to Netflix in this case, which can be dangerous in its own right…if you’re not careful, your wife will make you sit through old episodes of Dawson’s Creek.

If you guys only knew then what you know now.

Having made the mistake of telling Krissy that I never really watched it during its run on the WB (now the CW), she thought it would be a good idea to binge-watch our way through all 6 seasons. In all actuality, this has its pluses and minuses. On the 1 hand, if you don’t like the particular show (even if you do, really), binge-watching is like repeatedly bludgeoning yourself in the head with a hammer. On the other hand, you can burn through several seasons in the span of only a couple weeks, allowing you to forget the experience almost as quickly as it came into your life in the 1st place.

Additionally, having followed the show religiously during its initial run, Krissy had no need or desire to watch every show in its entirety. We watched just about all of seasons 1 and 2, mostly due to my “anal-ness,” I will admit. Around the beginning of season 3, I stopped caring so much, and let Krissy pick and choose the episodes of her liking. These usually involved some aspect of the Joey-Pacey love angle, which was by far her favorite aspect of Dawson’s Creek. While I wasn’t loving the show, I had still found myself somewhat invested though, and our skipping around left me asking, “Why are they doing that?” or, “What are they talking about?” multiple times per episode. Common sense usually overruled my anal-ness though, and I was able to let it go. By season 4, I didn’t care at all anymore, and I think we watched all of 3 episodes combined from seasons 5 and 6. For that reason alone, it was a relatively painless couple of weeks.

No Joey-Pacey love scenes were skipped over in the making of this blog.

Watching Dawson’s Creek now I couldn’t help but think how dated the show seems. It’s been less than a decade since it went off the air, but to say it didn’t age well is an understatement. Most, if not all, of the cockamamie schemes the teens from Capeside, MA, get into would be solved with cell phones now, and the amount of dudes wearing the plaid button-down/cargo shorts/Airwalks combo is remarkable. The other offputting thing about the show is that all the characters are a little too wordy and verbose for their own good…although I should probably steer clear of that argument given my ability to turn a 2 sentence blurb into an epic rant. Even amongst teen melodramas though, Dawson’s Creek makes you wonder how it stayed on the air for 6 years…but then you realize that the niche audience that is adolescent girls can keep a show alive for a long time…just look at One Tree Hill (9 seasons) as exhibit A.

The Rain

I can’t stand the rain against my window…

It’s only a 5 minute drive from our apartment to my office, but on this drizzly morning it was enough time for Missy Elliott’s “The Rain” to pop into my head. Even with the rain connotation, it’s such a random song to enter my consciousness…and it wasn’t the 1st time that’s happened either. The rhythm, melody, and lyrics are just so goofy though: beep, beep, who got the keys to my jeep? Vroom…

For nostalgia’s sake, the 1st thing I did this morning when I got to my desk was look up the music video on YouTube. It was a reminder of just how much I miss Misdemeanor…not so much for her music, which for my taste was just a’ight.

Her music videos were pretty legendary though in my opinion. They were creative, offbeat, and weirdly entertaining. More than that, they were completely different than anything else from that time period (or ever really). The images forever burned onto my brain for the video for “The Rain” are the scenes where she’s wearing something that looks to be part sumo suit, part inflated garbage bag while dancing in front of a funhouse camera lens…looking like 1 of those goofy inflatable mascots that every sports team has now.

Awwwww, those guys are so hype!

For s***s and giggles, I also looked up the album that I 1st heard “The Rain” on: a mix album called Party Over Here 98. To say it wasn’t something you would find in most people’s music catalogue is a huge understatement. If I recall correctly, it was the 2nd or 3rd CD I ever bought as a kid. At 1st glance, it seems like a dubious choice, but I think when skimming through the CD collection at Best Buy it was the only hip-hop album I could find that didn’t have a “parental advisory” label on it…a big plus for a 13 year old kid who’s Mom was waiting for him in the checkout line.

The s***.

In retrospect, it wasn’t a terrible choice…yes, all the songs were clean (which for some reason was always a bummer…like hearing all the “f***s” and “s***s somehow made it better), but the track list included Missy’s “The Rain,” Mark Morrison’s “Return Of The Mack,” Blackstreet’s all-time great “No Diggity,” and Busta Rhyme’s “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See.” (Everyone has a favorite rapper from when they were growing up...Busta was who I latched onto as my guy.)

So while I miss Missy, I have to say I disagree with her sentiment about the rain…it’s not so bad after all.

A Mixed Bag Of Sorts: Hopsin 5 And Streetballers

Just a couple of quick-hitters today…came across an interesting song the other day…well, a music video actually. I think the song’s called “Ill Mind of Hopsin 5.” (I know, big reach considering that’s the title of the video.) The video itself is a little ehhh, I don’t love the guy’s voice, he is a little too preachy for me, and for some reason Hopsin looks like the hip-hop version of the black dude from “Community.” Those sound like a lot of reasons not to watch the clip, but I found the lyrics smart and interesting none of the less. Give it a shot.

Fun bad movie to watch of the week: Streetballers. Why is it that all of these “good” bad movies that I bring up are sports movies? I guess it’s pretty easy to build a story with sports as a backdrop…anyway, there were actually parts of the movie that were not terrible. The storyline is better than you’d expect, the movie is shot in an interesting (almost music video-ish) sort of way, and the actual basketball scenes are decent (for a s***ty movie at least). The acting is just so bad though…so, so bad. It’s not hard to figure out why. After scrolling through the list of cast members, you’ll see few (if any) other credits from any other film work. One thing that killed the movie for me was the continual use of this ghost neighborhood kid, and our 1st lead, John, constantly speaking to him like a crazy person. It would have been ok if he showed up like twice, but after the eighth ghost kid scene you wish John would get outed by his girlfriend and admitted to a mental hospital…end of movie. Also, there are 2 sex scenes and 1 other semi-sex scene that are so porno-ish and out of place that it’s comical.

Here we go again.

The 1 other interesting tidbit is that the other lead character, Jacob, is played by a dude that actual played ball at Missouri and got some run playing professionally overseas (according to his Wikipedia page at least)…so at least there’s that. Anyway, if you find yourself scrolling through Netflix, and you can’t seem to locate anything decent to watch that you haven’t already seen, give Streetballers a look…you will at least get a couple of laughs out of the sex scene dialogue if nothing else.

McKinney would probably get a lot of s*** from his German teammates if they ever saw this movie...good thing they probably don't even know it exists.

ESPN Cliffnotes, 7/18/2012

I can’t think of a clever name for what I’m about to do, but I’m basically going to go through all the stories I read on ESPN.com this morning that I had some kind of reaction to. Think of it as my ESPN cliffnotes or something. Here…we…go!

I had a 7 game winning streak going in Streak for Cash up until yesterday. Whenever I build a streak past 5 in a row, I always talk myself into somehow having a shot at winning that month’s prize…and then for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to try to pick some UEFA Champions League qualifying match between 2 teams that I had never heard of before. As the kids say, f*** my life.

Mike Miller is apparently leaning towards rehabbing his back and returning to the Miami Heat next year instead of having surgery and retiring. Miller, Shane Battier, and James Jones will all likely not be expected to carry the respective loads that they had last year with the additions of Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis, but since they didn’t acquire a big man of any consequence it looks like the Heat are fully intent on employing the strategy of spreading the floor with shooters so LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh have more room to do their thing.

The Washington Wizards completed the trifecta of cleaning out their knucklehead closet yesterday in amnestying Andray Blatche. (The Wiz were able to rid themselves of Nick Young and Javale McGee through trades earlier this year.) When you consider Washington unloaded Gilbert Arenas and Rashard Lewis in the recent past as well, it makes you wonder how GM Ernie Grunfeld still can hold a job when he made so many terrible personnel decisions to begin with.

In a little beltway baseball recap, the seasons of the Nationals and the Orioles continue to go in opposite directions. Washington beat the Mets in walk-off fashion last night to improve their NL East lead to 3.5 games, as they continue to have the best record in the National League. The O’s on the other hand continued their annual slide, losing again to the Twins. Baltimore has lost 5 of 6 since the All-Star break, which finally allowed Tampa Bay to overtake them for 2nd place in the division.

In the last bit of DC sports news (as if there was any doubt that he would eventually sign), RG3 inked his rookie deal with the Washington Redskins today. Now, can we get our $36 mil in cap space that you cheated us out of back sometime, Mr. Goodell?

I don’t know who could have possibly foreseen this (*cough*), but the LA Lakers have positioned themselves back into the trade picture for Dwight Howard. Like the potential deal(s) with the Nets, it seems like the logistics of this trade are going to be a lot more complicated than simply moving Dwight Howard and Andrew Bynum. Because of that, third party teams are going to most likely have to be brought in to make any deal work, and that makes any move tougher to complete, but LA seemed like the most logical D-12 destination from the start…even if a trade doesn’t get done, that still seems like the most likely landing spot for Howard once the dust settles.